"so whatcha gonna do for your sweet sixteenth?

" saimah asked me as she scrolled down her facebook homepage, "i mean, throwing a party or ya know, taking us some where?" "i don't know, man", i reply, rifling through my new physics textbook, "throwing a party seems like such a cliche, and if we go somewhere, i'm sure hitler and m ussolini are gonna wanna tag along." hitler and mussolini, of course, being my p arents. "yeah, they're not going to let you invite boys either," she drawls, "and that's gonna be such a bummer because you know that if tushar won't come, damini won't either, and then sunaina won't, and the rest of the guys won't come too, so it won't be half as much fun, and that's not gonna be a sweet sixteen at all." "i know, but it's not like i can actually do anything about it!" "i don't blame you for having psychotic parents, dude." "i appreciate that." we then settle into our beloved routine: shrieking over funny photos, discussing the pros and cons of being in a relationship (we decide that it's better to jus t have fun than to be all serious at this age), remembering old stuff that happe ned. and that's when the chemistry lab incident resurfaces. "the chem lab thing", as we call it, is definitely our funniest, craziest and in evitably, most cherished memory of tenth grade. i'd been teasing her about this really creepy guy who had just proposed to her, kartik gupta, and all of a sudde n, she started bawling. i'm not kidding, that's what it looked like. she started crying while we were getting beakers for fuck's sake. i panicked, and i started apologising to her like mad. i even pulled on my most innocent expression, when all of a sudden, she started laughing hysterically. i asked her what the hell w as wrong with her, and then she told me that she'd just been pretending to cry, and then i started laughing too, because that was exactly the kind of ridiculous stuff that was forever happening to us. we got double punishment as we had dist urbed the peace and quiet of our geeky class, but it was so worth it. saimah and i had grown up together since the day in sixth grade when we discover ed that we both loved Hannah Montana. We'd talk for hours on the phone about the damned TV show, and we discovered so many other things that we had in common. We stopped watching Hannah Montana when we accidentally caught a repeat telecast of Lizzie McGuire at 3 am on our first sleepover. We both agreed that Lizzie wa s the better role model for us by a long shot, and we decided to learn from her many mistakes, and become the cool and sophisticated teenagers we always wanted to be. after lizzie, it was rory gilmore whom we idolized, followed by rachel gr eene, dharma montgomery and finally, serena van der woodsen. we never stopped ma king plans about our future, even when we knew that they were asinine and unlike ly to ever come true. i suppose the beauty of it all was the fact that during the most crazy moments o f a person's life, the moments when they break out and emerge as their own perso n, we were there for each other. she baked me brownies the day i got my first pe riod. i threw paint on the face of the first guy who dumped her ( i did that wit h the others too). i got punished for it, but all that mattered to me was that s aimah was not okay, and that the bastard who had dared to make her so deserved t o be taken revenge on. we'd always been there for each other, and that summer when i turned sixteen, we reiterated that again and again because saimah was moving. she was leaving her whole life in chandigarh and going to delhi. we didn't want to be sad or morose or weepy, so we decided to take our minds off things by doing what we did best: lounging around my room, just hanging out. we watched sex and the city, the movi e sequels, read candace bushnell's novels, and decided that the woman we ought t o become was definitely miranda hobbs, esq. we picked out the dresses that we li ked best, and tried to figure out which ones were still wearable and which not. we giggled over the abs of boys junior to us, and hung around the swimming pool in our colony to flirt with them with our full confidence, and their full shynes s and awkwardness. we tried our very best to never think about the dreaded move. and a few days, we didn't think about it at all.

summer vacations had started to wilt away, meaning only one thing: the day when saimah ali, my best friend for the last 5 years, was moving to delhi, 27 June, w as much too near. our group threw tons of going-away parties for her, had crazy photo-shoots, went to places of our childhood and adolescence, made albums full of our old pho tographs that made us cringe, laugh and cry simultaneously, got her all sorts of gifts to help her remember us, and hugged her and cried on her shoulders while she cried on ours and told her that chandigarh, school, nothing would ever be th e same without her. 27th dawned bright and clear. i woke up at 6 am, grimacing because i knew what w as going to happen in a few short hours. i hurriedly got dressed and snuck out o f my house and into hers, which thankfully, was close. i entered her room, where she was sitting on the edge of the bed, back towards t he door. 'hey', i said quietly. she turned to me. 'hey', she said, with a voice that indicated that she'd been s obbing, 'look what i found', and held up a card that i'd given to her in 8th gra de that had a photo of us dressed up as nuns, along with the caption, 'the two g irls most unlikely to ever become nuns. saimah and rabia forever!' which was acc ompanied by tons of hearts and flowers and balloons. 'oh my god, i didn't even knew that you'd-' my voice broke as i looked at the ph oto, looked at saimah, and suddenly realized just what i was about to lose. and then, before we even knew it, we were holding each other and sobbing and hop ing that our tears would somehow convey all the things we'd not said to each oth er in that summer. later, when we looked back on that moment, we understood something we'd never do ne before. we understood that we were crying not only because we were losing our best friend, we were also crying because for the first time in our teenage year s, we wouldn't be there for each other. she'd be in delhi, trying hard to adjust and fit in in her new school and trying to cope up with 11th grade commerce. i' d be still here in chandigarh, missing her every moment, while all around me peo ple would seem to miss her less and less with each passing day, trying hard to a djust to a world where i couldn't just ask her to come over and trying to cope u p with 11th grade biology. we were scared because despite all the promises of always keeping in touch, a sm all part of us knew that nothing would ever be the same. we were scared of everything that was happening and would happen.